Photo: The entrance to the 7-8 grade building at Pagosa Springs Middle School.
There are basically three reasons why local property owners might choose to vote “No” this coming November, when asked to approve a new $125 million debt burden for a proposed PreK-8 facility on Vista Boulevard. THe plan involves abandoning the existing. semi-historical (and still functional) Pagosa Springs Elementary School and Pagosa Springs Middle School.
Those three reasons:
1. This plan would move our schools out of the downtown area and thus deprive our children of convenient access to valuable non-school amenities available to them in downtown Pagosa Springs — the public library, public parks, the San Juan River, access to hiking and biking trails, local businesses — and locate them in the midst of a relatively isolated suburban neighborhood.
2. Our community cannot afford this big of a property tax increase in the current U.S. economy. We’ve recently had our local property taxes increase by 50%, our insurance costs increase, our food costs increase, our gasoline prices increase, our sales tax increase, our utility costs increase…
3. The proposed project is ridiculously overpriced for what we will get for our hard-earned money… and it makes more financial sense to repair and upgrade our existing downtown facilities.
At the Monday, August 17, meeting of “Citizens for ASD” — the (temporary?) name for a small group of local activists dedicated to campaigning in favor of this $125 million school bond measure — we heard one side of a story that will no doubt be shared on social media and in coffee shop conversations between now and the upcoming November 3 election.
I have to assume that the “other side of the story” will also be passed around?
There are three important numbers in this story, no matter which “side” you might favor.
1. The cost of the proposed new facility: about $130 million. Roughly ten times of the price of the Pagosa Springs High School when it was built in 1997.
2. The cost to Archuleta County property owners if they approve the necessary debt: about $125 million.
3. The cost to keep our existing facilities maintained, if the voters reject the $125 million property tax increase. That number is much more controversial, as will be discussed shortly.
I assume that not all of the 25 people who attended the “Citizens for ASD” meeting on Monday will necessarily participate in the “Vote Yes” campaign. I know that at least a few folks attended for informational purposes, and may very well end up participating in the “Vote No” campaign.
On August 17, we heard one side of the story, courtesy of Archuleta School District (ASD) Superintendent Rick Holt, one of the more prominent advocates of a new PreK-8 facility proposed for vacant School District property on Vista Boulevard west of town.
Mr. Holt spoke for about 10 minutes, sharing information about the proposed $130 million facility and how it might be financed with a combination of increased property taxes and a grant from the Colorado Department of Education.
He then spoke for another 10 minutes about why ASD has determined that our current Middle School and Elementary School, as functional and useful as they are, should not be repaired and upgraded, but should be abandoned. He specifically talked about the ongoing replacement of the Middle School gymnasium floor which was damaged by water leaks and needed to be totally replaced at great expense. He noted that the repairs are covered by insurance, so no cost to the taxpayers.
He also spoke about problems with sewer pipes at the Middle School (it’s not clear if those problems are also covered by insurance?) and shared the fact that some classrooms in the district do not have windows. He also noted that certain repairs and upgrades might require asbestos remediation, which can cost thousands of dollars — possibly even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In summary, Mr. Holt noted, repairs and upgrades to older buildings can be expensive.
But we’re shooting in the dark, to some degree, as to the actual cost of those repairs.
We actually have, however, a reasonable number for the deferred maintenance — “urgent or important” maintenance — at our two existing schools. This number was calculated by ASD Chief Operations Officer Jason Taylor and was presented to the School Board on August 5.
$17.4 million.
This estimated amount covers most of the necessary repairs Mr. Taylor believes would be needed at the Elementary School and Middle School over the next 10 years.
That number was quoted in a Pagosa Springs SUN article by reporter Clayton Chaney on August 13. From that article, referring to RTA, the Colorado Springs architects who led the Master Plan Advisory Committee (MPAC) process in 2025 :
Taylor went on to mention that RTA’s projected cost to complete the “urgent and important needs” at the elementary school came out to around $32.7 million, and roughly $25.9 million for the middle school’s maintenance needs, totaling at approximately $59 million.
Taylor commented that the district could get by with “less,” noting RTA’s estimate as sort of the “best-case scenario,” as that includes projects that would improve learning spaces…
Unfortunately for the volunteers serving on the MPAC , Mr. Taylor’s more sensible number — $17.4 million — was never available to them. The only number presented to that advisory group was RTA’s total of $59 million.
The MPAC group, as a whole, never questioned the “$59 million in necessary repairs” — necessary, we were told, within the next 5 years — and were misled into believing that maintaining our existing schools was plainly unaffordable.
Forgive me if I indicate my unhappiness, when a well-meaning volunteer advisory group is seriously misled by architects from Colorado Springs.
Based partly on RTA’s misleading estimates of the repairs needed in our existing buildings, the MPAC endorsed a project which is currently estimated to cost Archuleta County property owners $125 million, even if the community is successful in obtaining a matching BEST grant.
We might also note that the $125 million property tax debt has been estimated by those same Colorado Springs architects.
Read Part Eight… on Monday…